A drive assistance device of the before-mentioned kind is known from DE 198 57 786 A1, which is incorporated by reference herein in its entirety. Such a drive assistance device for a wheelchair comprises a drive motor, a running wheel, a sensor device, which is adapted to sense a driving force manually applied to the running wheel, and a control unit, which is adapted to control the drive motor for driving the running wheel depending on the driving force manually applied to, i.e. induced into the running wheel in accordance with a support level.
Such wheelchairs provide the possibility to a wheelchair driver to manually drive the wheelchair, for instance via respective hand rims at the running wheels. However, they support the manual drive as required, by means of the drive motor or the drive motors. For this purpose, the sensor device determines the respective force manually applied to the hand rim and the control unit controls the drive motor or the drive motors for driving the running wheel depending on the force induced into the hand rim in accordance with a support level.
Drive systems of the before-mentioned kind are therefore adapted to physically relieve the wheelchair driver. As a driving force or driving torque, respectively, on the one hand the manual force manually applied by the wheelchair driver to the running wheel, for example via a hand rim, and the torque resulting therefrom and, in addition thereto, an electric driving force and a corresponding driving torque of the drive motor, respectively, which are generated in that the control unit controls the drive motor correspondingly depending on the manually applied force in accordance with a support level are effective. During this kind of operation, the manual driving force and the torque resulting therefrom as well as the torque of the drive motor act in the same rotational direction. Both torques are added as far as their absolute value is concerned. The same applies in case of a breaking operation.
As a result, the wheelchair driver therefore only supplies a portion of the force necessary for locomotion or for breaking and, therefore, can negotiate even ascending and descending slopes without major efforts. The proportion between the manually induced forces and the torque generated by the electric motor, that is the support level, can be set in accordance with the personal requirements of the wheelchair driver and, as the case may be, can be pre-selected.
The option, to adjust the drive assistance device in accordance with the personal requirements of the wheelchair driver makes it desirable to determine these personal requirements as exact as possible. Accordingly, there is a need for an analyzer system which provides a classification of the physical capabilities of a wheelchair driver and, as the case may be, provides an automatic set up of the drive assistance device with suitable parameters.